Everyone this is Dr. Mark Boyd from parently. Today we're talking about your pregnant. First of all, congratulations. First of all, it's important understand not all women were expecting to be pregnant. I've talked about this in another video, that half of all pregnancies United States are unplanned, that doesn't mean that they're on wanted but unplanned. So today, you're either in shock, or you're ecstatic because you're pregnant.

Now what to do at this point, it's important first of all to understand if you are truly pregnant, and the only way to know this is to do a pregnancy tests of some sort. There's a urine pregnancy test that you can do at home, they're all the same. Just go to the drugstore and get a pregnancy test and do our first morning void urine. This will produce hormone from your urine that will make that urine Pregnancy Test turned positive if you're truly pregnant. The other thing you can do is you can go to the doctor's office and get a blood pregnancy test. That's more accurate at an earlier gestational level.

But if you've done a urine pregnancy test at home, or you've done a serum blood test at the hospital and you're truly pregnant, what to expect at this point? Well, your body is dramatically changing immediately after conception occurs. The fertilized egg goes from the fallopian tube down into the uterus and burrows itself into the uterus. hormones are changing in your body. And all this is going to make you feel and act very, very differently. Let's talk about some of the symptoms of early pregnancy.

Fatigue is probably the single greatest complaint that women have. They just feel exhausted. Oftentimes, you'll hear a woman come home from work or go straight to bed after she's realized that she's pregnant and she'll sleep the entire night. This fatigue can last the entire Pregnancy but it usually does not. It usually starts to go away after the first trimester, and we'll talk about trimesters in other videos. The second issue that can happen is women can have some spotting early in pregnancy.

This is due to the hormones of pregnancy. This is sometimes due to implantation bleeding that can occur in early pregnancy, but it's usually a common process and usually does not mean that you're gonna lose the pregnancy. Diet is a big problem early in pregnancy. What do I mean by that? Oftentimes, women will have no appetite and that's due to just feeling poorly from nausea and vomiting. Their significant changes in the way you perceive food early in pregnancy.

And this is oftentimes due to changes in your smell or your taste. So foods that you've always enjoyed, sometimes you hate. Sometimes you enjoy foods that you've never liked. This is a normal occurrence. nausea, vomiting, is probably gets the greatest headlines for anything in pregnancy. This is what women oftentimes Talk to me about in the office.

Oftentimes, they'll come to the emergency room because they haven't been able to keep anything down for several days. I encourage you to go ahead and be proactive in this scenario, talking to your doctor immediately if you have nausea and vomiting, and so they can get you on something that will be helpful and preventing you from becoming dehydrated. But there's a simple diet that we encourage all of our pregnant women early in pregnancy that have nausea and vomiting, that's called a BRAT diet stands for bananas, rice, applesauce, tea, and toast. So BRAT diet oftentimes will work well in early pregnancy. The other thing is to eat frequent small meals. Now, oftentimes women have to decide what works best for them, but obviously staying away from greasy foods, fatty foods, spicy foods, this will be helpful in preventing early nausea vomiting from getting worse.

Now another symptom that women experience is feeling hot, oftentimes Women will feel extremely hot and wonder if they have a fever. Now, why is this? Well, as you become pregnant, your estrogen levels start to decrease and your prolactin levels start to increase. prolactin is the hormone that causes your breasts to form milk after pregnancy. And, but during pregnancy, obviously you don't want to produce milk. So you have elevated prolactin levels.

And you have low estrogen levels. It's the low estrogen levels that give you that sensation of feeling hot. It's the same sensation that women have when they're going through menopause. This is a normal problem, or normal concern in early pregnancy. Obviously, the last issue is Menzies. No universally women stop having periods when they become pregnant, but not all women do.

I've had women through my career that have had menstrual cycles all the way through their pregnancy. This is pretty uncommon, but it's not you universally uncommon. If this happens, obviously you're going to be concerned you'll end up seeing your physician or your health care provider routinely. And this is what I've encouraged you to do. Now, there's many, many other early pregnancy complaints. These are the main ones that I hear about and heard about through for years.

I encourage you to be proactive specifically with the nausea vomiting to prevent you from getting dehydrated. The fatigue will go away, the bleeding we've addressed, but there are other issues that you may experience. Talk to your healthcare provider. That's it for today. We'll talk again